New Startup, Papyrs, Wants To Revive “The Intranet” – Corporate Wiki

Papyrs is out to help small business owners bring their corporate communication to a new level. While Google Docs and other online collaboration tools are great for typing documents, Wim Cools, co-fonder of Papyrs tells me that they’re not great for “for linking information together, or for discussing and collecting other information”.

A Papyrs “intranet” (which is not offline software, but also an online web application) is a place where all this information comes together: documents, HR forms, discussions, status updates, employee profiles, social media and widgets (like twitter mentions or a poll), company news, and so on. Writing documents is just one aspect what Papyrs pages can be used for, and in fact we also integrate with Google Apps.

Papyrs ( http://www.papyrs.com ) is a web app that allows companies to build their own social intranet site with drag & drop. Users can create wiki-like pages to share information and knowledge, documents, images, social media widgets, and so on. It’s also possible to add online forms to collect data and process requests (like tracking expenses). We recently launched a new feature called Papyrs Apps (www.papyrs.com/apps/), which allows users to use the same drag&drop editor to also build more complete database apps for their business intranet.

Wim says his goal with Papyrs is to provide a platform companies can use to build a complete intranet themselves, without needing any technical knowledge (in contrast to more traditional systems like SharePoint; the complexity and IT knowledge required often make these platforms too expensive and time consuming for small businesses).

Companies using Papyrs pay per month, depending on the number of employees (starting at $49/month).